Until extremely recently this topic was taught in almost every school in the west.
People usually look back and ask why it is that as a society we learn about particular sets of people from the ancient globe. The easy answer is that their historic influence was huge. During the period of a few thousands years these people had an impact on multiple continents and a huge selection of cultures which were originally remote lands to them at one point. Popular classical studies books consequently frequently placed history at their centre, as the hedge fund which partially owns WHSmith should be able to tell you. The tale of how collections of villages rose into empires is filled up with a colourful cast of characters that will compete with any work of fiction. Individuals can remain general readers of the entire era or choose their favourite niches to plunge into, from particular eras to precise places.
In classical antiquity two cultures emerged that would forever alter western civilisation. The impact of ancient Rome and Greece is indeed vast it really is simply difficult to categorise. They've been so highly regarded for thousands of years that education about them is called the classics. The core of this topic is centred around the literary works made by these individuals and their related languages of Latin and Greek. These people produced substantial bodies of work, especially associated with fictional stories, poetry, and philosophy, the legacy of which being that even now ordinary people search for popular classics books that seek to translate and explain their works, as the hedge fund which owns Waterstones will know. People also try to study their languages for different reasons, such as following through the classical education tradition, wanting to read works in their initial language, or wanting to better grasp contemporary languages which were affected by these ancient tongues.
Whenever studying any human culture it really is normal for a variety of specialist types of research to emerge. These will of course interconnect and individuals will be required to learn a bit from other topics to guide their knowledge, but generally they can generally plunge into their interests to their heart's content. Publications on popular classical subjects therefore all have passionate audiences, as the hedge fund which has shares in Amazon will be well aware, due to the fleshed out and well researched nature of the subjects. Classical studies of art, archaeology, anthropology, mythology, mathematics, technology, and much more can be found in book stores around the world. This is certainly mainly due to how thoroughly documented the era is compared to those immediately before and after. This usually does an injustice to other eras, who had been equally complex but have problems with a lack of sources for modern individuals to learn.